


you want a love that consumes you

by dandelionlighters



Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:07:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23223748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelionlighters/pseuds/dandelionlighters
Summary: Josie had been Dark Josie for three days, and Hope had not been able to catch her breath completely right that entire time.—“What are you doing?” Hope breathes out the words like a whimper, her jaw almost trembling. Josie giggles like she knows exactly what she’s doing, and Hope hates this—she hates this back and forth, she hates feeling like the siphoner’s playing with her.“Why?” Josie asks, almost mockingly, and Hope burns. “Do you want me to stop?”
Relationships: Hope Mikaelson/Josie Saltzman
Comments: 328
Kudos: 1435





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> “You want a love that consumes you. You want passion and adventure, and even a little danger.” 
> 
> —Damon Salvatore

Josie had been Dark Josie for three days, and Hope had not been able to catch her breath completely right that entire time. 

The girl was _everywhere_ , sticking to Hope’s insides like fire until every single inhale and exhale was a flame. If Josie was fire, Hope was smoke. 

She was the rush of air that chased after Josie, brave enough to approach fire but too much of a coward to do anything else. She was the dangerous fumes that left the air polluted, and it seemed Josie Saltzman could not get enough of unclean air. 

In fact, Hope saw the siphoner all the time now—and it left an exhilarating taste in her mouth like soot at the back of her throat. 

Within a week, Josie found her place with the mean girls at breakfast, ate with them at lunch and dinner, too. In class, she used magic relentlessly and casually, her fingers glowing hot red like embers every time she performed a spell. At night, she ignored her sister Lizzie’s sad gazes and pinned Hope with her own longing, smoldering stares. She flirted with the tribrid any time she got the chance, but would never admit to it, would always pretend nothing was truly happening. 

Hope Mikaelson could not escape her. Even in the library, it seemed. 

“Hey,” a voice like fire whispers in her ear. Hope shivers despite the burn. She drops the book she’s holding, something jolting deep underneath her skin as her eyes glance to Josie’s. 

She had been hiding behind a bookshelf for over an hour now, hiding because she was afraid, hiding because she could not face her feelings. 

Catching the look in Josie’s eyes, Hope takes a step back, her shoulders hitting the shelf behind her. 

“Hey,” she tries casually, her voice oddly husky. Why did she feel so damn flustered? 

“You’ve been avoiding me,” the witch accuses, twirling a strand of hair with her fingers. Hope swallows thickly. 

“I...of course not,” Hope laughs, somewhat nervously. Josie seems to bristle at that, only moving closer. Hope has no space left to back up, and when she breathes, all she smells is Josie. Had the girl always smelled so... _good_? 

Josie places a warm hand directly on top of Hope’s own where it lies on the shelf next to her. The tribrid’s eyes fall shut at the small pressure, and she feels a golden haze scorch her vision. 

“What are you doing?” Hope breathes out the words like a whimper, her jaw almost trembling. Josie giggles like she knows exactly what she’s doing, and Hope hates this—she hates this back and forth, she hates feeling like the siphoner’s playing with her. 

“Why?” Josie asks, almost mockingly, and Hope _burns_. “Do you want me to stop?” 

“I—“ Josie breathes hotly against her pulse point, boxing the tribrid in with her body. Hope turns her head to the side, unsure if she’s trying to get away or if she’s trying to allow the other girl to do more. 

It’s fire, when Josie scrapes her teeth lightly over the sensitive spot on Hope’s neck, like an accident. 

It’s smoke, when Hope gasps almost silently, her eyes snapping open in a yellow daze. She looks around and finds herself alone. 

All traces of Josie have left the building, except for a lingering scent—something uniquely dangerous and sinfully sweet. 

Hope’s chest shakes with the hungry intensity of a wanton heart. 


	2. Chapter 2

It’s Friday, and Hope is hanging by herself at a party in the woods. Lizzie had been the one to force her to come along, but after two hours Hope could not allow herself to stomach the stench of sweat and cheep beer, and she had wandered off. 

She now sits on the large trunk of a fallen tree, an empty, red solo cup in her hand. She’s deeply in thought, thinking that she could blame the smell all she wanted, but the real reason she had left was because of Josie. 

Josie, who had worn a tight, black dress to the party. Josie, who had been staring at her so terribly provocatively the entire night Hope could not function. Josie, who had almost kissed her in the library a few days ago.

And it was so wrong, that Hope could not stop thinking about her. It was wrong because this was not truly Josie, but instead Dark Josie, and Hope could not let herself get manipulated like this. 

What would happen when they brought back the real Josie? Hope wonders. 

Would she be able to look her in the eye, after all of these horrible, longing thoughts? Hope did not think so. 

Would she be able to talk to her, without choking on every word? Hope knew not. 

The tribrid stands up, ready to leave and get back to her room, when a warm hand sets itself against her shoulder. The wolf in her acts on instinct, detecting the danger on a deeper level, and she has the person’s back against a tree before they can blink, their hands held up above their heads. 

Her eyes spark yellow once, twice, and then the gold color disappears altogether as they focus on Josie Saltzman. She sees dark eyes and then a wicked smile. 

Josie—not-Josie—raises her eyebrows almost playfully.

“I-I’m sorry,” Hope breathes, immediately letting her go. She tries to take a step back, but Josie doesn’t let her. She bares her teeth dangerously at the other girl in response, but the siphoner doesn’t seem to notice. 

“You haven’t shifted in a while, have you?” Her fingers drift along the sharp line of Hope’s jaw, gentle enough that Hope can barely feel it but the touch stings all the same. Her touches then float north, until she basically has a finger in Hope’s mouth. It strokes just lightly against one of Hope’s canines, and they react by themselves—elongating into sharp, killer fangs. And God, it’s so _fucking_ erotic for a reason Hope doesn’t want to understand. Venom pools thickly in her mouth, and she pushes Josie away. 

To the answer the question, no, Hope hasn’t shifted in a while. She hasn’t been able to trust that she won’t hurt someone in her angry, tormented state. She feels like she might tear a hundred people apart to shreds if she changes into her wolf. 

“Don’t touch me,” Hope whispers, not unkindly, done playing this game. Josie only smirks. 

“But I know _you_ want to touch _me_ ,” she almost purrs, directly into Hope’s ear, and the tribrid’s chest roars. The lips against her ear moves closer, just at the lobe, dragging lightly against Hope’s skin. She nearly melts into a puddle on the floor. Hope bites back a whimper. 

“No, I...” she trails off, unconvincing. “ _No_ —“ 

She tries to take a heavy breath to focus, and then a soft hand wraps around her wrist, moving it against fire-hot skin. 

She watches, almost as if she’s on the outside, or in a trance, as her hand travels down Josie’s side to her naval, then down, dipping even lower—

A branch somewhere distantly snaps, like another drunken teenager has accidentally wandered into the woods, but that’s all Josie needs to step away. 

“Goodbye, Hope,” she whispers, walking backwards, and Hope feels like the world is burning around her. 


	3. Chapter 3

Sunday night comes quickly, and finds Hope coming back to the school after spending much of the day as a wolf. It had been a relieving experience, and she had felt much better than she had in days. There is nothing as relaxing as only being able to feel the air in her lungs and the ground beneath her feet. But it’s over now, and she’s currently crossing the main hallway of the boarding school into a smaller one. 

It’s late, but Hope has no sense of time as to how late. There is not a single sound in the school, though, and the tribrid assumes that everyone’s already asleep. It’s so quiet that Hope can hear her breathing, and the anxious beat of her heart. 

Why does she feel so nervous? 

She knows deep down that it’s silly to be afraid, but there is no other explanation for the bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. 

Hope hears a quiet, dark laugh, and nearly freezes in her footsteps. She quickly assumes that she had only imagined the sound when she doesn’t hear it again. She’s tired, after all, so exhausted her eyelids are heavy and keep closing every few seconds. 

She takes another heavy step, only to hear another laugh, this time a darker one, and she comes to a full stop as she tries to listen for more. She soon realizes that there actually is someone out here, and they’re giggling, a small noise only carried to Hope by the breeze of the wind. 

She’s probably overreacting, though. The giggles are most likely coming from a pair of teenagers making out in the distance. Yes, Hope is _sure_ that’s it. 

Another laugh comes, much more closely to her ear, and Hope turns around startled. The small sounds keep on coming, closer and closer, but Hope can’t find the source. 

“Show yourself,” she hisses, her voice a whisper, and freezes as she feels a presence behind her back. Why couldn’t she turn around? 

A chin slots itself just behind her shoulder, not enough that she can see the person, but Hope already knows who it is.

“Why _should_ I?” Josie whispers back, so close her voice vibrated like ice underneath Hope’s skin. “This is _so_ much more fun.” 

Her hand settles on Hope’s hip, like an afterthought. Hope feels the gentle touch like a torch lit directly to bare skin. Using all of her super strength, she tries not to lean into Josie’s warm hand.

“Let go of me,” she grits out, not meaning it, but Josie doesn’t listen to her anyways. 

“Did I surprise you?” Josie asks, honeyed and almost childish, and still so fucking close. Hope’s blood runs delightfully cold, soothing the fever she was sure she had. 

Hope presses her lips into a thin line, determined not to talk. The hold on her hip becomes almost tighter, but not enough to hurt. 

“Answer me, please,” the voice implores, so sweet, and Hope has no choice. 

“Yes,” Hope nearly whimpers, her voice weak where it hadn’t been before. She feels her knees like jelly. She desperately needs to sit down, yet, she’s absolutely paralyzed. “You did.” 

“Now,” she adds, trying to at least appear as if she had a back bone. It seems so hard, with the hand still on her hip. She is certain that Josie knows exactly what she’s doing to her by keeping it there. “Let go of me.” 

“I don’t _want_ to,” Josie tells her, and it goes straight to Hope’s abdomen, pooling like liquid fire. Josie _has_ to know what she’s doing to her. She feels like she might fall over if a strong breeze of wind blows passed her. “But I guess I _do_ have to go, for the moment.” 

Her grab on Hope’s hip becomes feather-light, and the tribrid resists turning around to get a better look at her. Her traitorous eyes glance around the room quickly. She chokes down the words asking the other girl to stay. 

“Try not to miss me _too_ much,” Josie murmurs, almost distantly, and for a second, Hope thinks that she’s actually gone. 

She nearly moves, but in a small instant, a pair of lips press themselves against her cheek, like a sweet goodbye, so faintly that Hope finds herself yearning for more. 

A swoosh of air hums passed Hope’s ear, alerting her that the other girl has left, and only then does the feeling in her body come back to her. She raises her finger to her cheek, disbelieving, wondering if Josie’s lips had truly been there, or if she had just imagined it. 


	4. Chapter 4

A week passes and Hope becomes _miserable_. She can’t sleep without feeling hot lips on her face, she can’t change into her wolf without remembering warm fingers against her fangs. And Josie Saltzman continues to appear wholly unaffected, as it seems. 

She doesn’t look at Hope anymore, almost as if she’s satisfied with the pain she’s caused, as if she had gotten what she wanted and no longer cared. 

And it stings, just between Hope’s _clenching_ teeth, just _underneath_ her skin. It stings so unbearably that she finds herself at the other girl’s door on a school night. 

Josie had moved out of her sister’s dorm, and had instead kicked a boy out of his own large room and organized herself within it. It’s _this_ room that Hope is in front of now. 

She knocks, knowing that the siphoner has to be inside of it. The door opens, revealing dark hair and dark clothes. 

Josie’s pajamas are sinfully revealing, with obscenely short shorts and a see-through mesh top that displays a flat stomach. Hope herself hadn’t bothered to change out of the school uniform. 

Josie smiles, more a smirk than anything else, and Hope forces herself to look away, forces herself to stop checking the other girl out because, _that’s her friend Josie, for God’s sake._

“I _knew_ you would come,” Josie says, very simply, like she had even been waiting, but it feels like Hope’s entire blood volume is boiling inside her body. She shakes her head, her fingers trembling. 

Josie opens the door more widely and Hope invites herself in, looking around without seeing anything at all. She’s too focused on Josie right next to her, right behind her. Why had she come in the first place? 

How could she be so selfish as to approach the other girl? How could she be so selfish to hunger after her so insanely and incessantly? 

Hope turns around, and Josie pins her with a small laugh that falls silently out of malicious lips. Hope absolutely snaps, colliding with Josie and closing the door with their combined weights as she slams the siphoner into it. The door shudders underneath their power, and Hope _loves_ that she doesn’t have to worry about hurting her, and _hates_ it all the same. 

Josie lets herself be moved without protest, an arm against her collarbone, a hand on her side to box her in. Her eyes had widened very minutely, but Hope had _caught_ it, she had caught the moment of weakness, even if it had lasted less than half a second. 

“Where is Josie?” she growls, pressing harder against the other girl in such a way that she can feel how perfectly their bodies fit together. It leaves her breathless and dizzy.   


  
Hope grows frustrated as the sound of Josie’s heart beats resounds loudly in her ears, stagnantly normal—if a little quick—but not as quick as Hope wants to hear. 

Josie leans in as much as she can considering the elbow against her neck. Hope steels herself for the answer. “I’m right _here_ , baby.” 

Hope’s eyes blink dangerously at the nickname, and she slots her head next to Josie’s so the girl can’t see how utterly _weak_ she is, moving her hand to the other side of the wall. It’s the wrong choice, because it allows Josie to move just enough to undo the first button of Hope’s shirt. 

Her fingers skim the skin underneath it, and Hope backs away from the throbbing lips that chase after. It’s not enough to get the other girl to stop, and then she feels a mouth grazing at her collarbone. She clenches her fists and pushes Josie back against the door, fighting against the animal urge to just _take_ her—

“ _Where_. _Is_. _She_?” 

Josie sighs and stops trying to kiss the tribrid. One of her hands bunches against the fabric of Hope’s white button-up. “Do you want me to be her? I can pretend, if you _want_?” 

She smiles sweetly, before concern etches itself onto her face. Her fingers let go of their hold on Hope’s shirt. God, she even gets Josie’s signature pout right, the inflection in her voice exactly. “ _Hope_? Are you okay?” 

Hope shakes her head and releases Josie, her teeth chattering. A shiver runs down her spine. 

She doesn’t know how many times Josie had asked her that throughout her time at the school. 

And how much she had taken it for granted. 


	5. Chapter 5

After that, Hope doesn’t go looking for Josie again, and Josie certainly doesn’t go looking for her.

The next time she talks to the other girl, it’s completely on accident. In fact, Hope had been going out of her way to avoid the siphoner. 

She spends her afternoons and nights trapped in her room, and only leaves when she’s sure Josie isn’t loitering in the hallways. When she walks into a room, she listens for the girl’s voice to make sure she’s not in it. Sometimes, she even goes as far as to sniff the air to check for her telltale scent. She finds herself frustrated every time she hears and smells nothing at all. 

Because she _did_ want to see Josie, no matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise. Overtime, she had even come to feel as though she was a drug addict, and Josie had left her completely shaking with withdrawal. 

Some nights, she’ll wake up in a cold sweat from a nightmare, her hair sticking to the light sheen on her forehead, the collar of her shirt completely drenched. Her stomach will growl just enough that it burns, and she’ll place a too-warm hand on her abdomen like she can feel the misery herself. She’ll blink quickly—suddenly remembering what she had woken up from—as if trying to banish the images of black eyes and pouty lips against her eyelids. She’ll then take a cold shower, resolving to fill the pit in her stomach with food. 

That’s how Hope finds her that night. 

She’s so exhausted that she forgets to listen for voices as she walks into the kitchen, and her pupils instantly dilate at the sight before her. 

Dark Josie’s sitting up on the kitchen island, her legs spread wide open with an auburn-haired boy—a werewolf from Jed’s pack—standing between them. He’s kissing sloppily at her neck, and she’s panting softly with her head thrown back, her hands in his hair to guide his lips. 

Hope freezes so completely that she almost trips over the kitchen tile. Her heart stops in her chest, and her arteries constrict almost violently, the blood within them cooling to ice. She quickly looks away like she can’t bear to see a second glance, and her lips part, no sound coming out of them. 

A thick swallow of misery gets trapped in her throat, and she gulps uselessly. She feels sick to her stomach, her appetite from earlier gone in an instant. 

Hope spins on her heel and leaves, feeling white-hot jealous nipping at her feet. She _almost_ runs, almost _flees_ like the coward she is, but just manages to get to her room only walking. 

She shuts the door behind her and sits down at her desk with her head in her hands, rubbing at her eyes, wishing she was blind. 

“Aww, don’t tell me you’re _upset_.” 

Hope looks up sharply and glances away, not wanting to give the other girl anymore power than she already has. 

“I’m _not_ ,” she says, her voice clipped enough to not be believable. She turns back into her chair and stares at the desk in front of her, clenching her fists when she feels the presence of Josie directly behind her. “Get out of my room.” 

“But I _just_ got here,” Josie whines, spinning Hope around to face her. The tribrid can barely look her in the eye—she’s so fucking pissed off and humiliated. 

“I said _get out_ ,” she snaps, finally looking at Josie but all she can see is that horny boy kissing her in the kitchen. Josie just comes closer, watching her very carefully. 

“ _Oh_ ,” she croons, sitting directly on Hope’s lap in the chair, straddling her. Hope nearly shakes beneath her, trying to keep her hands to herself. The siphoner only leans in, tucking a strand of hair behind the tribrid’s ear. “Jealousy looks _so_ hot on you.” 

Hope bristles underneath her attention, trying not to feel the warmth of the girl’s proximity. Did she have to really sit in Hope’s lap, staring at her like that? Hope tries to tell herself that this didn’t mean anything. Yet, the look in Josie’s eyes was unmistakable—it was the same from when she had caught Hope in the library, the same from in the forest, the same from in the hallway, the same from in the girl’s own room. 

“I’m not jealous,” she bites out, her eyes dancing with flecks of gold, feeling slightly repetitive. 

“No, no,” Josie shakes her head almost tauntingly. She’s so close that her breath scorches Hope’s lips, almost enough that she can taste her. “If you want me for yourself—“

She curls her fingers around Hope’s hand on the arm of the chair, pulling it onto the skin of her thighs, moving her skirt high above her waist. Hope chokes on a ragged breath, a groan unraveling at the back of her throat. 

“Then _take_ me.” 

Desire curls at the edge of Hope’s vision, painting everything golden. Her eyes become heavy-lidded with hunger. She doesn’t yet move, though, fighting against the deep urge to _touch_ and _please_ as Josie’s hips grind forward just enough that Hope can feel it down in her bones. 

When Hope still doesn’t take action, Josie takes the tribrid’s hands in her own again and trails them higher, passed her thighs and naval, then directly against her breasts. Her fingers tremble as Josie sighs sweetly, bouncing slightly on her thighs. 

Hope closes her eyes, trying desperately to pretend that _that_ wasn’t the sexiest sound she had ever heard. She keeps them closed as Josie balances herself against Hope’s thigh and continues to rock back and forth. Josie’s scent becomes tangy with arousal, so wet and strong that venom pools in Hope’s mouth. 

She takes a deep steadying breath that does absolutely _nothing_. 

Small gasps continue to spill from the siphoner’s lips and Hope’s eyes startle open as she realizes what the girl’s doing. 

“Are you...?” she trails off, and Josie only hums, her breathing undeniably getting quicker as her hips keep undulating. Hope convinces herself that she’s not incredibly turned on at the fact that she can feel moist heat against her leg. Half of her is upset at the fact that Josie’s been getting herself off while Hope’s been trying so hard to not lose control. 

Before she can stop herself, she reaches out and grabs ahold of Josie’s hips tightly, halting her movements. The siphoner comes to a quick stop and opens her eyes slowly, her pupils blown. 

“Changed your mind?” she giggles, and Hope leans in, finding her resolve coming back to her. 

“Get out of my room.” 


	6. Chapter 6

Hope sits with her head in her hands, halfway close to falling asleep in her History of Magic class. The bell ringing is just enough to clear her thoughts and she shoulders her bag, quickly escaping through the door. 

It’s safe to say that Hope Mikaelson had not gotten any sleep this entire week. 

The super squad had spent much of their time devoted to helping Josie, but it had all been in vain. The only way the siphoner could become herself again was if Josie got through to Dark-Josie and chose to come out, or if they could siphon the dark magic out of her. Unfortunately, the second part involved transferring that dark magic to someone else, which they could not do without sacrificing their morals.

Hope shakes herself from those particular thoughts and wanders the hallways to get to her next class. She’s so distracted that she can barely react when a hand shoots out from a nearby door and pulls her into a girl’s bathroom.

She doesn’t make a single sound passed the barely audible gasp that she lets out when her eyes catch her attacker. 

The girl’s hair is back to brown, and she’s actually wearing her own clothes—not the dark, black ones she’s taken to since the dark magic corrupted her. 

Hope notices that her skirt is a little shorter around her hips than she would normally wear, but she looks exactly like she used to. The tribrid’s heart jolts with desperation and hope. 

“ _Josie_?” she asks, her throat hoarse where it tangles with her vocal cords. The barest hint of a smile touches the siphoner’s lips, but she still looks nervous. “Is that you?” 

Hope doesn’t have a moment to blink before two arms are swung around her waist and soft hair is brushing against her face. She stands completely frozen for a long second before hugging Josie back. 

Her skin thrums pleasantly, every hair standing to attention as the first real smile she’s had in days makes its way onto her face. It stretches against her lips quickly, like a habit or an instinct that she had distanced herself from yet had never _really_ forgotten. 

She’s so happy that she almost forgets the awful things she did with Dark-Josie, forgets that she had almost kissed her several times, had almost done more than kissing several times—

That’s not the point. She’s too happy. So happy that her body becomes numb to the world and relief settles deep into her veins and arteries. It relaxes the harsh set to her shoulders, soothes the ache between her bones. 

So, Hope almost doesn’t feel it when something soft brushes her hair and skims her nape. She pauses when the sensation occurs twice, right where Josie’s head is buried into her neck. 

It comes again, and this time Hope recognizes the feeling. How could she have ever forgotten it to begin with? A pair of lips travel across her skin, skimming over her neck just gently enough that Hope shivers. 

The same lips rise to her left ear, circling the lobe and then dragging careful teeth around it. Hope stills, the press of her body against the other girl’s suddenly all-consuming and intoxicating. “I missed you.” 

“Josie, I—“ The tribrid exhales her name on the breath of a whimper, her eyes shooting with flecks of gold. Teeth tug a second time, more roughly in a way that sets a fire and extinguishes it in Hope all the same, and she pulls away from the siphoner with no small hint of reluctance. “N-no, we shouldn’t—“

“Do you not want me?” Josie asks, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth and then pouting in that all-too familiar way. But Hope catches the curl of annoyance at the right corner of her lip, a curl of annoyance that is decidedly not Josie Saltzman. 

Hope’s heart shatters soundlessly against the tile of the bathroom. 

“I can’t _believe_ you,” she spits out, and the perfect picture in front of her transforms within the blink of an eye. Dark-Josie sighs and crosses her arms, the effort of putting on an act leeching away as her hair darkens to black once again.

“Do you _have_ to _always_ ruin everything?” Josie scowls, and Hope just keeps shaking her head, unwilling or maybe desperate not to believe it. No. This was simply all a dream or some fucked-up nightmare. She had not fallen for another one of Dark-Josie’s tricks. 

She turns her back and reaches for the door, all her thoughts concentrated on an escape. She doesn’t quite get there. 

Josie flashes before her in an unexpected move, her hand lying on top of Hope’s on the doorknob. She uses her other hand to push back the tribrid’s shoulder until she’s pressed against the door. 

“Don’t _ever_ turn your back on me.” A hot tongue swipes at the side of her neck before she can even react. The tongue turns into teeth, relentless and sucking against her skin. She chokes out a moan, biting her lip to the point of drawing blood. Josie backs up slightly, the grin on her face complete _filth_. 

“I knew you’d like—“ 

Hope grabs onto her waist and shoves her roughly against the door within the instant of a nanosecond, reversing their positions and eliciting a needy whimper out of Josie’s mouth. 

Her lips latch onto the side of her neck, completely surrendering to the animalistic urge to bite and claim and fuck. And Josie—Josie tastes just like she had always imagined.Hope nearly growls as her hands grip the girl’s hips more tightly, her teeth finding a sensitive spot that makes Josie cant up and then her jaw snaps down. 

“ _Ah_!—“ 

Josie breathes a moan into her ear, scraping sharp nails down her back through Hope’s thin shirt. The pressure is just enough to send a jolt down the tribrid’s spine straight to her abdomen, and she blinks open yellow eyes of shock. 

“Oh, no.” Her voice comes out strangled, and she drops her head down in shame. Her vision remains golden. This is wrong. “This is wrong. This is wrong—“

Josie sighs quietly. 

“Come on,” she whines, dragging the last word out. She tugs the hem of Hope’s shirt hard and the the tribrid stumbles back into her, her chest heaving like she can’t breathe. A pair of lips ghost over hers once, and she leans back before they can again. 

“No. Stop.” 

“ _What_?” Josie’s voice is almost patronizing. She slips her hand underneath Hope’s shirt and rakes her nails against a toned stomach. “You _don’t_ want to have secret bathroom sex with me?” 

Hope groans a noise that she doesn’t let passed the bars of her teeth. 

“You don’t want to _fuck_ me against a stall where everyone can hear it?” she continues, her fingers wandering. Hope clenches her eyes shut. “Vamp PE is going on next door.” 

Yes, Hope knows. She can hear the irritating bouncing of dodgeballs against the floor and off of bodies. “Then _everyone_ would know that I’m _yours_.” 

Hope’s black vision grows warm with yellow against her closed eyelids. Her wolf likes the idea very much. 

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Josie adds, like she knows just what to say, like she can read Hope’s mind. She punctuates her question with a light kiss under Hope’s trembling jaw. The touch sends the tribrid’s pounding heart to a devastating stop. 

She tries to gather her resolve. Hope opens her eyes slowly, her fists clenched at her sides. “I, uh. N-no. I don’t want you. I want Josie.” 

“ _Josie_ won’t mind, baby,” the siphoner says, her other hand wrapping around Hope’s own and unclenching her fingers almost delicately. Hope swallows venom at the familiar pet name. “She wants this as much as I do.” 

“Let her tell me that herself.” 

Josie leans back, almost surprised. Hope glimpses something familiar in her eyes, almost like some semblance of the old-Josie, and then it’s gone just as quickly. 

She blinks, and then pulls away her hands. Hope feels the lustful air encompassing them break in a single second as she laughs. “I can’t do that, but nice try.” 

She pushes on Hope’s shoulders, and the girl steps back in response. “Whatever. If you won’t _fuck_ me, I’ll get someone else to do it.” 

Hope’s chest grows tight with a familiar green-eyed monster. 

Josie only straightens her skirt, tugging it even higher around her hips before shooting Hope one last amused look and leaving. 

A feeling buries itself deep within Hope’s skin. It itches and pulls at her, and Hope decides to name it _anger_ , because to call it _regret_ might make her fall to her knees and die on the spot. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’ll be replying to all comments shortly :)


	7. Chapter 7

To her surprise, one of Dark-Josie’s minions _requests_ Hope’s _presence_ —yes, she actually said that—in the siphoner’s room a day later. To her greater surprise, Hope actually chooses to go, if not just to get her curiosity sated. Nothing else sated, of course, she hadn’t even been thinking that way—

Hope wants to appear casual, so she dresses in a thin, white shirt and a grey pair of sweatpants. She won’t let anything happen this time, she tells herself. No, she won’t let Josie seduce her, she won’t touch her friend like that, because it might be _Dark-Josie_ , but it’s _Josie’s_ body, and she can’t go there _ever_ again.

She wonders why the other girl wants to meet so late—it’s nearly midnight—but decides she doesn’t really care that much. She reaches Josie’s room pretty quickly, stopping short in front of the door as she hears uneven breathing from inside. 

She tilts her head, raising her hand to knock when she hears a choked whimper. Her ears prick at the sound, her hand falling back to her side. 

_Um_.

Maybe without her meaning to, her hearing adjusts through the door, listening for danger. Suspiciously slick noises trailed by something that sounds a lot like a moan reaches Hope’s ears, and she takes a step back, her heart hammering in her rib cage. 

Maybe she has the time wrong? 

Another moan.

Another choked whimper.

More wet sounds, followed by—

“ _Hope_.” 

The tribrid swiftly pushes the door in, her movements not her own, and the lock shatters before breaking. The door swings open and she storms in, getting her first look inside the room before speedily turning around at what she sees. 

Josie’s all laid out in the middle of her bed-half naked, wearing a matching black set of lingerie with her legs spread wide open and her hand buried between them. A thin piece of cloth that can hardly be called underwear is pushed down to her thighs, not even bothered to be taken off. Her eyes are closed in bliss, her lips parted open. 

The image is burned into Hope’s head moments after she looks away, and the tantalizing scent of the siphoner pervades all her senses and submits her to her most feral desires.

Hope stays turned around until her canines recede, until she can feel the edge of her vision lose its golden streak. She swipes with her tongue across her teeth, wetting her lips with venom. It stings just enough to remind her that she needs to calm down. 

When she hears shuffling near the bed and then feels movement behind her, it becomes that much harder to remember. A warm body presses itself against her back, a soft arm wrapping around her waist. 

Hope continues to freeze up, her gaze glued to the empty wall in front of her. Yellow glimmers across her eyes again, but this time it remains. 

A single hand moves her hair out of the way to her shoulder, and Hope swallows thickly as soft lips press against the skin of her nape. 

She doesn’t even hear it when she sighs quietly, the hard set of her spine stiffening even more as the lips wander to the shell of her ear. 

“Turn around,” Josie whispers, and Hope’s abdomen coils tightly. She shakes her head slowly, much like trying to move stone. 

“Put some clothes on.” Hope’s voice comes out far too rough and deep, but she can’t focus on that for very long because Josie keeps kissing along her neck, so lightly that the tribrid thinks she’s dreaming. 

“Just so you can tear them off of me again?” The siphoner giggles, nearly purring into her ear. It’s so sexy that Hope nearly melts against her hold. “Please, Hope. You can’t _wait_ to get your hands on me. There’s no need to pretend...”

“You knew I was coming,” Hope speaks through clenched teeth, trying desperately hard not to let her body shake in the slightest. Josie will be all over her in an instant if she catches even a _hint_ of weakness. 

“Well, yes...” Josie trails off again, fingering the collar of Hope’s thin shirt. “I thought we could have some fun.” 

The tribrid can practically feel the the pout of Josie’s lips against her skin. “I...you thought wrong.” 

Her words run together too quickly and forced to be believable, allowing the pout to turn into a smile buried into her neck. Hope shivers, the muscles in her back rippling as electricity runs down her spine. With all the willpower she has left, she shrugs the other girl off of her as gently as possible with her anger. 

Her fists clench themselves, wondering how Josie has been able to keep getting her in this position over and over again. She turns around heatedly, forgetting herself in her indignation. 

“If you ever try this again, I’ll...” Hope’s throat runs dry, her eyes dropping below the siphoner’s head to rake along her body. Filthy pictures begin to fill her head, and Josie smirks like she knows exactly what she’s fantasizing about. 

“ _My_ ,” she husks, loving the attention. She pulls Hope in once again by the tie of her pants. The tribrid thinks, not for the first time, that Dark-Josie might be able to _actually_ fucking read minds. “Someone’s getting ahead of themselves.” 

Hope blinks, her throat bobbing with the intensity of her swallowing thickly. She trains her eyes on the ceiling, unable to believe where her thoughts had gone in seconds. “It’s late. I need to go.” 

The siphoner stops her at the door. 

“No. Wait.” Something in Josie’s eye flickers, like panic or desperation or something else entirely, and she snaps her fingers, dark clothes attaching themselves to her skin. They’re not modest by any means, but Hope can finally look at her without feeling flustered now. 

“I wanted to invite you to my pool party I’m throwing next Friday,” she says, any brief flash of panic gone. “The whole school will be going. I need someone to keep me company.” 

Her words are casual, nonchalant even, but something about them gives Hope pause. She stares intensely at the other girl for a couple of seconds, but can’t find the part that rubs her the wrong way. 

She takes another step back out the door, shaking her head. She’s been here for too long. “I’m not going.” 

Dark-Josie seems to watch her carefully, the same as she had done moments before. Perhaps she sees the way Hope hesitates at the door, perhaps she can see _right_ through her. “You will.” 

Hope only scowls and leaves. 

She really needs to find a way to stop all of this, the tribrid knows. She needs to save Josie. She needs Josie to save herself. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, this is what i did instead of studying for the AP psych exam :(

The Necromancer comes to all of them with a deal. 

For one, they had not even noticed he was spying on them to know enough about their predicament with Josie in the first place, but that was a problem for another time. 

Here’s what the Necromancer does: 

He offers himself up to be the vessel that they can transfer Dark-Josie’s black magic to, which is super weird, but the tribrid can’t really complain. 

“What’s in it for you?” Hope furrows her eyebrows. Alaric nods as if to agree. The Necromancer only drums his fingers together dramatically, an evil laugh cackling out of his mouth. 

“The power, of course.” 

Hope and Alaric both roll their eyes, and after nearly three hours of discussing it, the man decides that he cares much more for his daughter than a guy who laughs like the villain of every action movie ever made. 

However, Alaric isn’t so stupid as to completely trust the Necromancer, so they all agree to sign a contract. 

Sure, it could come back to bite them all, a little risky fact that spurs Hope and Alaric into adding an amendment to the contract—the Necromancer will leave Mystic Falls and all of them alone after this. It’s not very binding and it’s not the most complex of magical contracts, but it’s enough to bring tears to Alaric’s eyes as he thinks about getting his innocent daughter back. 

Hope has much more reservations about the whole thing, but it’s not like she can voice them without sounding like an actual villain. For example, what if they remove all the black magic out of Josie and she’s still Dark-Josie? What if the real Josie already died and it’s all been a—

_No_. 

Of course, it’s much more complicated than that. To even transfer the dark magic out of her, they need to get her unconscious somehow, because she definitely won’t _not_ put up a fight awake. 

To do that, they need to distract her enough for Hope or Lizzie to put her to sleep. The tribrid already knows this is going to end poorly for her. 

It’s a Friday, when they decide to carry out their plan. It also happens to be the same day that Josie is throwing her pool party at the school. 

“Alright, Hope,” Lizzie plops down next to her in Alaric’s office, her voice determined in a way that scares the tribrid. “It’s your job to kidnap Josie.” 

“ _My_ job?” Hope splutters. Why did Lizzie have to word it like that? “You’re _her_ sister.” 

“I’m _Josie’s_ sister,” she corrects. “Not Bloody Mary the Second’s.” 

Hope smirks slightly in amusement. 

“Besides,” she continues, “she threatened to drown me if I come within three feet of her little goth party, whereas you—if I can remember correctly—got a _personal_ invitation.” 

Hope definitely does not need to think hard to remember correctly herself.

“Right,” she nods, her thoughts focusing somewhere else. She starts to daydream about things she probably shouldn’t, and Lizzie shakes her.

“I swear, Mikaelson, if you mess this up...” The threat is empty but Hope allows herself to be pulled out of her thoughts. 

“I won’t,” she says as sincerely as possible, meeting her eyes with Lizzie, who rolls her own eyes dramatically, not liking the sudden display of emotion. “Whatever, just make sure everything’s ready in the Salvatore crypt.” 

As the party rolls around, Hope makes sure not to arrive early. An hour in, she abandons her post of watching from inside the school, and starts to slowly walk to the pool outside. 

The first thing she notices is that it’s loud, though that had been pretty clear when she was inside, too. The music is blasting to its highest volume, and Hope can see very well that most of the older students are either swimming or dancing. Thank God there aren’t any younger students here, because there’s plenty of kids making out and grinding. 

Hope feels a bit overdressed in her jeans and sweater, but it’s late enough in the evening that she doesn’t feel overly hot. She still wishes that she didn’t stand out so much. It seems like everyone had gotten the message to wear swimsuits. 

Her eyes sweep over the crowd to look for one person in particular, but doesn’t find her anywhere. She closes her eyes and starts to rely on her other senses. 

Her ears adjust to an almost overwhelming degree—she hears the sound of someone suckling on a straw, wet splashes from the pool, a game of truth or dare in the hot tub, a single click of a beer bottle cap, the soft padding of wet feet against concrete, the—

“Damn, you’re so hot.” Hope’s breath catches in her throat at the deep timbre of the male voice. It sounds far away but right next to her all the same. 

“I know.” Her heart shudders like someone’s ripped their hand inside of her chest. She instantly recognizes the female voice, the way the syllables curl with something akin to annoyance and haughtiness. The voice is breathless even, both of them are, panting disgustingly. The tribrid doesn’t want to imagine what they’re doing, she doesn’t want to think about it at all. 

“I’m going to fuck you so hard you won’t be able to walk for days...” Then—the sound of ruffled clothing, a muted gasp, another sharp intake of breath. Hope snaps open her eyes, fire racing through her veins. Someone gives her a weird look as she passes them, but she’s already too far gone. 

Her nose takes her straight to the pool shed close to the party, her heart thudding in her ears so loudly she can’t hear a single thing passed it. That same dangerous, intoxicating scent that has been torturing her for weeks travels through her senses and sets them right to flames. 

She throws open the door, but only one person inside of the shed actually startles at her appearance. It’s the same auburn-haired werewolf from that night in the kitchen, but it seems that him and Josie have gotten much farther this time. 

The boy turns completely around, nearly dropping the siphoner whose legs are still wrapped around him obscenely. His eyes glow yellow at the interruption and Hope’s wolf meets him with a similar stare. 

“Get out,” she growls, canines poking at her lips. She had barely felt the transformation, but the venom in her mouth is very clear now. 

The boy has the gall to glare at her, but one glare of her own followed by another firm—

“ _Get. Out._ ” 

—has him rapidly fleeing the pool shed. Hope shoots daggers into the back of his head until he completely leaves, her eyes still fixed on him until he’s several feet away and she can no longer hear his rough breathing pattern. 

The door shuts, and the tribrid turns to face Dark-Josie with what she dearly hopes is a blank look. The siphoner gives her an unimpressed look of her own. 

“I wasn’t finished with him,” she complains, straightening up her black bikini bottoms and tugging her white, lacy cover-up over her shoulders. Hope tries not to look, but her dark eyes betray her, tracking the motion like a hungry shark sensing blood in water. “Must you always interrupt my fun?” 

Hope bristles, crossing her arms and tapping her foot impatiently, but what exactly is she waiting for? “Must you always _have_ fun?” 

Josie saunters up to her, swaying her hips with a dangerous allure. Hope glances up and away to the ceiling, concentrating her energy on the cobwebs littering the corners of it. 

She tries to focus even harder when the siphoner moves closer and drags her fingers over Hope’s arms, lightly skimming the material of her sweater to uncross her arms. The tribrid can just barely make out a spider spinning its own web in the corner, or maybe all of the webs are the spider’s. So fascinating, isn’t it? Webs, webs, webs...

The fingers walking up her arm circles around her collarbone, digging into the point where it protrudes from her neck. Hope hisses a groan through clenched teeth, not wanting to give the dark witch the satisfaction. 

“It’s only fair that you finish what he started,” Josie murmurs, her lips parting and closing like a lullaby. Hope’s eyelids flutter, entranced. Black paints a pretty picture in the blinking darkness. “...Since you so _rudely_ interrupted and all...” 

At the mention of the boy from earlier, Hope can’t help the jealousy, can’t help the words that had been on her mind since seeing that auburn-haired werewolf again. Her eyes daze open, her next sentence coming out much too distractedly. “He looks like me.” 

“It’s easier that way,” Josie confesses, her voice soft and nothing like the black magic raging through her veins. The reminder of a past life whizzes through Hope’s mind and leaves her breathless. 

“I’ve been waiting for you...” Josie adds, replacing her fingers on Hope’s collarbone with eager lips. Skilled teeth tug away the collar of her shirt, and Hope sucks in a panting breath, a prayer to the gods on her tongue. 

“I’m not here for you.” She resists, in vain, a chuckle reverberating against her skin and through her bones. Hope’s heart gives a weak shake, her rib cage aches, her stomach twists. 

“You are,” Josie insists, something in her tone desperate, something else in her tone angry. Her lips then suck hard at the junction between Hope’s jaw and shoulder. Hope stays quiet. Josie swirls her tongue around a sensitive spot and bites down. Hope tries her best to stay quiet. “You _are_. Admit it.” 

Hope’s silence only infuriates her further. Her teeth become rough and uncaring, her nails scraping against the back of the tribrid’s neck, drawing red lines with not a single inch of mercy. 

“ _Admit it_ ,” the siphoner repeats, the words sharp but almost...distressed? That can’t be right. Dark-Josie doesn’t have feelings, surely? No. She doesn’t. 

The siphoner dips lower, back to Hope’s collarbone, pulling a reluctant moan from the shorter girl. 

Hope immediately backs away, her eyes flashing with humiliation, her mouth hanging open in surprise. It doesn’t matter, because Josie’s own eyes close anyway at the sound, like she’s savoring it. 

“ _Hmm_ ,” she hums, stepping forward to touch Hope’s lips with the pad of her thumb. Her eyes lower to her mouth, as if asking for her lips to release another noise. “I was beginning to think I was the only one getting turned on.” 

“You’re...?” Hope breathes, her words falling away, a large part of her not able to say them, a large part of her afraid to. Josie’s other hand tightly wraps around her wrist and pulls her fingers down to her bikini bottoms. 

The same fingers guide her along the black lace, brushing the siphoner’s slit through the wet—God, so _wet_ —fabric like a mere accident, and Hope’s eyes glow golden. Arousal hits her nose tangy and intoxicating. 

“I’m soaked,” Josie tells her, needy and breathy, rocking her hips against Hope’s hand, making short, little gasps into her ear as she hangs her head over the tribrid’s shoulder. 

“Please,” she whimpers out, when Hope shifts her fingers away, arching into the touch like flames licking at oxygen. Hope won’t do this to Josie. She _can’t_ do this to her. They’re _friends_. The siphoner will _hate_ her for it later. 

That doesn’t stop Hope from hooking her thumbs around the lace of the swimsuit, intent on pulling it down and off of the other girl, it doesn’t stop her teeth from growing into canines, it doesn’t stop her—

A boisterous laugh followed by something bumping into the door effectively pulls Hope out of the spell Josie’s obviously somehow put her in. She hears another loud giggle and then a noise like liquid falling to the ground. 

Hope throws herself off of the other girl with a pained growl shaking her chest, her eyes too dark and too golden all at once. They glint between blue and yellow, settling on blue. 

“You’re such a _fucking_ tease,” Josie curses, more furious than Hope has ever seen her before. “Getting me all excited and then...” 

She doesn’t even continue, pushing passed Hope with such force that the tribrid’s back collides into the opposite wall, her breath escaping her lungs with brutal speed. 

The door slams closed, and Hope urgently follows after her, remembering that she’s here for a reason. Lizzie and her have a plan—oh no, the plan! 

The shorter girl briefly makes eye contact with the two teenagers lounging outside the shed, catching a glimpse of a fallen red solo cup on the ground. They disperse immediately with one shocked look at her and another meaningful look at each other. 

Hope ignores them, stumbling after Josie. She catches the head of brown hair not very far, and swiftly waves her hand with a sleeping spell tumbling out of her lips. 

Josie faints, falling backward like a swaying tree in the breeze. Hope catches her with two arms wrapped around her waist, wishing that this could have been easier. She wishes that it hadn’t had to end like this. 

—

“ _Magia tollox de terras_.” 

Lizzie chants the words over and over again, her arms held out in the air, her eyes periodically glancing to Josie’s unconscious figure laying in the middle of the boundary circle. 

“ _Magia tollox de terras._ ” 

Swirls of black and whips of grey release from Josie’s chest, from her mouth, from her veins, from her entire fucking body. The tribrid watches with steeled, blue eyes, which briefly glint a colder color, as if in memory of the plague-spirit _Inadu_. 

“ _Magia tollox de terras_.” 

(It reminds Hope too much of the Hollow, in a way that rings painfully in her ears and makes her absolutely sick to her stomach.)

Moments later, the black magic consumes the Necromancer in its entirety, and he screams in delight with a sickly-sweet grin on his face. The power makes him fall to his knees, but it brings the smile to his eyes all the same. 

“Lizzie?” Hope snaps her head to the weak body in the circle, slowly pulling herself up. Josie Saltzman sways slightly on her feet, as if hit with a sudden dizzying spell, before she manages and steadies her wobbling knees. 

Hope’s insides stick with dread and fill with relief all at once, the lighter brown in Josie’s eyes almost unrecognizable after weeks of black. She sighs quietly, a lost noise, like she doesn’t know whether to be utterly miserable or entirely happy instead. 

The tribrid watches as the two sisters rush to hug each other. Alaric joins them not a second after, his eyes gleaming with unrestrained joy. Hope’s own mirror the expression, but there’s something deeper still—a question begging to be answered. 

Does the siphoner _remember_? 

Her eyes meet Josie’s from over Lizzie’s shoulder, and a jolt of lightning spreads down her spine. Hope shivers despite herself, bumps erupting across her skin as the siphoner mouths, “Thank you.” 

Those two words are answer enough. She doesn’t remember a thing. 

The tribrid nods, walking away to give the family time to unite and find their way back to each other. It’s been a long couple of weeks, and she can only hope that things will go back to the way they were before this whole mess. 

She knows that they never will. 


	9. Chapter 9

It’s been an entire week since the real Josie came back, and Hope still hasn’t seriously talked to her. Their moments are short-lived, filled with small talk and inconsequential things. Hope is absolutely okay with that, of course, since Josie spends most of her time with her family, now. 

The school has seemed to welcome Josie back fine, even if the siphoner (with no siphon power) still feels awful about everything she had done when she was not herself. The tribrid has noticed that she’s much quieter now, her responses shorter and her eyes darker, as if they’re still tormented by a part that she will never shake away. 

Some of the particularly gothic students miss Dark-Josie, Hope can tell. Josie has taken the time to personally apologize to every student at the school in a plight to earn their forgiveness, but the goth group of witches and vampires always seem to linger passed the apologies and attempts at amends. 

They look at Josie like they want more, and sometimes they approach her and ask her weird, dark questions with hopeful gazes. It surprises Hope when Josie answers them without hesitation, and it appears to shock the siphoner all the same, as if she doesn’t know how she’s able to reply, as if Dark-Josie is still locked in a deep part of her mind she’ll never forget. 

Sometimes Hope misses Dark-Josie, too. 

She doesn’t admit it to herself, but it’s there whenever Josie chuckles more darkly than usual, there when a single corner of her lip quirks up with the hint of a playful smirk as she zones out of a class lecture, there when the siphoner catches Hope staring—her eyes growing dark like muted fire before she looks away. 

It’s a horrible thought, but she can’t help craving the dark part of Josie, anyways. Dark-Josie _liked_ Hope, Dark-Josie sought after her time and time again, but Josie doesn’t. Josie barely spares her a second glance sometimes, and it frustrates Hope like she would have never thought possible. 

She can’t tell anyone, of course. Josie doesn’t remember the times that they shared, the moments up against doors and trees and in the hallways, and Hope never bothers to utter it passed her own thoughts. She definitely can’t tell Lizzie, and not MG, and _God_ , Alaric would kill her if he even knew what she was thinking. 

Yet, Josie still plagues Hope’s mind, despite how much she tries not to think about it. She continues to torture every part of her body, making the tribrid’s teeth throb, tired of clenching and grinding them to stop words from escaping; and her eyes sore, utterly exhausted from staring at the siphoner every waking minute but wholly unable to look away. 

It’s this exhaustion that keeps her up at night, her eyelids heavy but unwilling to stay closed for longer than three seconds at a time. It’s also why she finds herself up and out of her bed on a Saturday, returning to old habits of wandering into the kitchen late at night to soothe the aching pit in her stomach. 

(She keeps forgetting to eat. She can’t remember how to sleep.) 

“Oh, come _on_ , baby.” Hope sighs at the familiar whining, male voice, recognizing the boy’s pungent smell, something woodsy and sweaty. She then groans. She does not need this now, and certainly not _ever_. “Just a couple of weeks ago, you were begging for it right on this counter.” 

Hope narrows her eyes, sniffing slightly as she rounds the corner. She encounters another scent, a far too welcome one for her. 

“Please, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Josie Saltzman pleads, a glass of water in her hand as that same auburn-haired werewolf from a week earlier backs her up into the counter. Hope steps in between them just as the boy reaches out to grab at the siphoner. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she growls, Josie’s ragged breathing spurring the tribrid on behind her. She can feel it puffing against the back of her neck, scorching her skin like heated embers. 

“I, uh—“ The boy stammers, backing up slightly, but not nearly enough to satisfy Hope. She curls her lips with a cruel snarl, ready to unleash hell on him. 

However, brushing fingers along her sides silence her next words. Her breath hitches at the sensation, her gaze shifting down and away, her anger melting almost instantly. 

All the same, the placating touch only stokes the flames within her more. How dare Josie try to calm her down? She should rip him to fucking shreds for even attempting to _approach_ the siphoner. 

In the meantime, as Hope tries to collect herself, the boy swiftly collects _himself_ and his words. He seems to realize who he’s talking to. Or maybe not. “She’s pretending she can’t remember what we did together, Mikaelson. You have to understand...” 

Hope waves her hand and quiets him with a silencing spell. 

“No. _You_ understand,” she begins, pulling away from the soothing hand attempting to tug her back. She leans up to his face. “Listen to me, and listen clearly, because I will not be repeating myself.” 

He nods shakily. “Nothing happened between you two. She does not owe you a single damn thing.”   
  


Hope feels like she’s talking to herself. 

“Now, you will never come within five feet of her ever again, unless you’re planning to drop to your knees and beg for forgiveness. _Understood_?” 

The werewolf nods again, and then sets his jaw and stalks away, muttering loudly underneath his breath, “Fucking hypocrite.” 

Unfortunately, Josie hears him. 

“What did _that_ mean?” she asks, a bit breathless, dragging her hand away from Hope as the tribrid turns around to face her. Hope notices that the fingers wrapped around her glass of water are shaking. 

She takes a deep breath to still her own shaking fingers, her hands clenching at her sides. She tries her best to relax knowing Josie is watching, though, unfurling her fists and wringing her hands together before dropping them. How long has it been since Josie said more than three words in greeting to her? 

“You really don’t remember anything, then?” Hope deflects, her voice laced with disappointment even before Josie answers. The siphoner looks at her peculiarly, shaking her head, her gaze almost distracted. 

“N-no,” she stutters, “Is there something...?” 

Hope wants to scream, she wants to yell at Josie and ask her how she can’t remember the feeling of the tribrid’s canines biting into her neck, how she can’t remember the feeling of Hope’s fingers five seconds from pushing themselves inside her. But that would make her even worse than the werewolf she had kicked out of the kitchen for the very same reason. She is not worse. She isn’t. 

“No,” Hope says, instead. She laughs nervously, a flash of teeth and lips and tongue leaking into her vision like a golden light. Her lips stretch into a rueful smirk, her chest tight and unforgiving. “I was just asking. Goodnight, Jo.” 

—

Hope wakes up to a rapid knocking against her door. She stretches and yawns, an all-too familiar, delicious scent drifting into her nose and staying there. 

She swings her legs over the bed quickly and gets up, nearly jogging to open the door. When she unlocks it, the plank of wood creaks open like a faulty floorboard. Josie Saltzman appears on the other side, her hair slightly messy and her eyes wide, holding herself with her arms wrapped around her elbows. 

Hope glances out her window and realizes that it’s barely morning. In fact, it’s still dark out. She focuses her attention back to the siphoner, who’s still in her pajamas and a pair of bunny slippers. The tribrid tries not to let her eyes trail over the long legs left exposed by her shorts, or the dark, nearly-transparent robe wrapped thinly around her. 

“Hey—“ 

“I remember.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops, i forgot to mention that i will be writing a part two sometime in the future...sorry


	10. the End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry i was too lazy to write a whole ass part two so here’s some closure :)

Outside, a lone tree branch sways gently in the breeze and both girls hear it. 

Neither Hope nor Josie move, just staring at each other and waiting for the other to say something first. 

For a few long moments, time carries on happily without them. 

At last, Hope’s chapped lips part, her shoulders visibly tense. Her face loses all the color it has left, blood running very, very cold and much, much too hot all at once. 

Isn’t this what she had wanted, just hours ago? For Josie to remember their time together? To remember moments they shared when Josie wasn’t truly herself? 

Isn’t this what she had been all but begging Josie for in the kitchen? 

Just to _remember_? 

Yet, looking back now, Hope can’t think of anything worse. What will the siphoner think of her, now? Will she even be able to look at Hope without seeing some disgusting, vile pervert in her place? 

While Hope might have been asleep minutes ago, she is now wide awake. 

“Josie—“ she starts, slowly, dread and desperation written clear across her face. 

Josie doesn’t give her a second to explain, inviting herself into Hope’s room with her hands still tucked underneath her elbows as she paces back and forth. 

Hope catches a glimpse of the other girl’s delicate fingers trembling, and she wonders if Josie sees them, too, and if that’s her way of trying to hide them. 

Her left hand is clasped much more tightly around her elbow than the other one, as if she’s holding something within her palm. Hope can’t completely tell, though, and she forgets all about it when Josie finally speaks up. 

“I haven’t been able to sleep much lately,” the siphoner tells her, words coming so fast that they run into and over each other, breath coming so hot and shallow that Hope marvels, “but I’ve been having dreams, and I thought that they were just nightmares, or _something_ , but they’re not. I don’t think...” 

She stops, and her back has been facing Hope since this moment, but not anymore. She turns around, eyes so large and wet that Hope can’t quite tear her own gaze away. She almost forgets to shut the door to her room, but just manages to kick it closed behind her. 

“I didn’t really think anything of them, not until what happened in the kitchen,” Josie continues, still talking so fast, but her voice is now quiet and almost...timid. “And then you left and I went to bed and everything came back to me.” 

Fuck. 

Is it Hope’s turn to speak? She doesn’t know what to say. 

How does she apologize for this? How can she ever make Josie understand the way she had lusted after Dark-Josie like some type of crazed, horny animal? How can she even hope to ask the other girl for any forgiveness at all? 

“Josie,” she says again, because Josie’s name has always been easy to her, as easy to Hope as learning how to breathe, learning how to walk. Her tongue knows the word as much as it knows her own name. “I am _so_ sorry.” 

That seems to surprise the siphoner, who lets out a scoff with wide, alarmed eyes. 

“ _You’re_ sorry?” she asks, a hint of disbelief in her voice. Hope swears that her chest caves in, she swears that she can feel the instant her heart stops beating. “ _I_ can’t even begin to apologize.” 

“Why would you apologize?” Hope furrows her eyebrows in confusion, and maybe there’s a hint of disbelief in her own voice, too. She glances off to the side, feeling her stomach twist something slimy like a snake. “I took advantage of you. I practically...” 

_ Assaulted you?  _

She can’t even say it. 

“No.” Josie shakes her head resolutely, almost like she’s angry at herself. She steps forward, throwing a hand out in front of her. Hope notices that she keeps the other one strictly to herself. “I shouldn’t have let her do that to you. I shouldn’t have let her take control to begin with.” 

“No, _no_.” Hope almost reaches out towards Josie, almost fucking touches her, before she stops herself. How can Josie ever think that this is anyone else’s fault but Hope’s? 

Heat crawls up the tribrid’s throat, and a headache pounds behind the walls of her temple. Before she knows it, tears well up in her eyes unbidden. She thinks that if she blinks fast enough, maybe she won’t cry. 

“You couldn’t have known,” Hope tries, voice firm even though every part of her is struggling not to break down. “It’s not your fault, Jo. That wasn’t you.” 

Silence. 

It drags on for an uncomfortably-long minute as Josie flits her eyes to the ground, throat bobbing. A single tear falls down her face. She wipes swiftly at her cheek with the back of her hand, eyes shooting up suddenly—unexpectedly. 

Hope’s heart shoots up into her throat all the same. A fool she had been earlier, to think it had stopped beating. No. She can feel it pounding against the flesh of her neck. 

A fool she had been. 

The tribrid wonders if she should try to comfort the other girl. 

She wonders if Josie is waiting for her to say those stupid, meaningless little things one is expected to when someone else is crying: _everything will be fine, there, there, don’t worry, let it all out, it’s okay._

Hope says nothing at all. 

“What if it was?” Josie asks, very carefully, eyes still on Hope’s like she’s searching for her reaction. 

“I...” Hope swallows thickly. “What do you mean?” 

Josie resumes her pacing, crossing and unfolding her arms again and again as if she doesn’t quite know how to start. 

Well, Hope thinks, at least she isn’t crying anymore. 

“She made me feel powerful,” Josie finally begins, coming to a stand in front of Hope. “Strong. With her, I didn’t have to be weak, little siphon-witch Josie Saltzman.” 

Hope frowns.

“I didn’t have to be _weak_ ,” the other girl emphasizes. “She told me that she could give me magic of my own, as long as I let her in. It didn’t seem so bad.” 

“And she became...” Her eyes dance around the room as she tries to find the right word. For a second, Hope can almost swear that the other girl’s eyes sparkle. “... _Familiar_.” 

“She knew everything about me, all of my secrets, all of my most darkest, littlest desires I could never say out loud,” Josie confesses, not once making eye-contact with Hope. “She used them against me.” 

Josie drops the hand she had been holding to herself, but her fingers are still clenched tightly into a fist. Hope catches a single glimpse of something shiny within her digits before it disappears. 

“No. That’s not right.” Josie pauses, intent on correcting herself. “She used them _for me_.” 

Her full lips pull into a frown. Hope hates it. “It started with small spells that I normally wouldn’t use, like with that poor boy’s arm at the football game, and darker thoughts I normally wouldn’t dare to think. Like with...” 

Josie trails off, maybe struggling to finish her thoughts again. She suckles her bottom lip into her mouth, tapping her clasped hand against her stomach as she thinks. 

Hope leans in, almost as if in a trance, like a prisoner, hanging onto the siphoner’s every word with no chance of pardon. She sways dangerously forward, almost tripping over herself in her desire to hear Josie continue. 

She only finds relief when Josie releases her bottom lip from her mouth, shaking her head just barely. “Nevermind,” she decides. 

Hope catches herself from the sudden spell and leans back, scolding herself for being so transparent and curious. She carefully straightens her back and raises her chin high. 

No. She won’t do something like that again. What had she been doing, anyway? Swooning? No. Hope hadn’t been doing that. _Gross_. 

“I didn’t even notice it, at the start.” Hope blinks, eyes snapping to Josie’s own. Her breath hitches. “The black magic said I could trust it. Trust her.” 

“That—“ Josie swallows hard enough that Hope can hear it. She inhales deeply before speaking. “That I didn’t have to be Lizzie’s shadow anymore. That I didn’t have to be codependent.”

“That it was okay to hurt someone that had hurt me. That I should start hurting people before they could get the chance to hurt me.” She draws her brows together, staring intently at Hope, eyes dark and clouded. “And then, before I knew it, I was just hurting people.” 

A pause.

“Hurting—“ Josie exhales shakily. “Everyone I care about.” 

The tribrid wonders if that includes her. That if, when Josie thinks about the people she cares for, she thinks about Hope. 

“For no good reason,” Josie adds, quietly, and then, even more quietly—

“Sometimes, I wasn’t even there for it.” 

At Hope’s questioning look, Josie explains, slowly and gingerly, like if she doesn’t get this right she might never get anything right again, or maybe Hope is reading too much into it, “I would have little holes in my memories, I would black out in the middle of the day.” 

“I started to lose time.” Josie tightens that same fist, and, not for the first time, Hope wonders if she’s holding something. Maybe a coin? Maybe a stress ball? It has to be _something_. “I started to lose everything.”

Hope bites the inside of her cheek, wanting to interrupt, wanting to scream—

_ You didn’t lose me.  _

“And then, pretty soon,” the siphoner says, voice soft, but unmistakably upset. “Her thoughts became my thoughts, and then her thoughts were _all_ of my thoughts, and then I just didn’t have a say at all. I became...everything I grew up to hate.” 

_You are not the darkness inside of you_ , Hope wants to tell her, but a terrible, selfish part of Hope that remembers the burn of fire and smoke is screaming, _I wish you were._

(After all, it was not Josie that had desired Hope. Not Josie. Not truly.) 

“She took everything away from me.” Another rough swallow. If Hope looks close enough, she can see the misery trapped in Josie’s throat herself. “And I let her.” 

The tribrid clenches her teeth, jaw visibly ticking. She knows that Josie is wrong. But the siphoner isn’t done talking, and Hope won’t dare interrupt her if she can help it. 

She wants Josie to know that she’s listening. 

“It was my fault,” Josie concludes, solemnly, a miserable pout against her lips and her shoulders curling inwards like she’s shrinking in on herself. “So don’t tell me it’s not.” 

This time, when the silence comes, Hope finds it refreshing. She takes a moment to gather her thoughts, takes a moment for her resolve to harden to stone as her eyes lock on Josie’s. 

She takes a deep, quiet breath that fills her lungs with steel. 

“You’re wrong,” she tells Josie, unable to keep the anger out of her voice. This anger is not for Josie. It’s for herself. “It’s not your fault, and she didn’t take anything away from you. Listen to me, Josie...” 

Hope steps forward, wanting to make sure Josie understands. “She never did. You have—“

She almost says it. 

Almost says—

_ You have me.  _

Almost tells Josie that she will always have Hope, even when they are separated by centuries, even when there are thousands of miles that part them. 

“You have your dad,” Hope amends, skin itching with want and desire and everything she won’t let herself have. “You have your sister, your friends...” 

Maybe she can sneak herself in. Maybe, if she she can even her voice out enough, if she can say it casually enough, Josie won’t notice and Hope can pretend that she is among the list of people Josie cares about it. 

If Hope speaks, it is only to scratch the deep itch beneath her skin. 

“You have me.” 

Her voice isn’t as even as she would like it to be, but she thinks that maybe she’s gotten away with it when Josie turns away. She knows that she hasn’t when the siphoner shakes her head. 

“No, I don’t,” Josie says, almost seething. “I lost you the second she got her hands on you. I can’t believe—“ 

She cuts herself off so suddenly that Hope has to do a double-take. Her eyes trace the other girl’s knitted eyebrows and pale face, remnants of her darker-self, no doubt. 

“I can’t believe I didn’t even remember until now,” Josie murmurs, after a long minute. Hope has the distance thought that that was not what she had meant to say at all. Her eyes narrow slightly, but she lets Josie move on. “How could I not remember that we...?” 

Hope doesn’t blame her when the siphoner doesn’t finish her sentence. 

Because that’s the question, isn’t it? What exactly had they done? 

They hadn’t kissed, exactly, no. They hadn’t had _sex_ , but not for lack of Dark-Josie trying. 

What had they done? 

They had shared secret moments hidden in bathrooms and dorm rooms. They had shared—

No. That’s not right. Hope and Josie hadn’t _shared_ anything. At least, Hope hadn’t shared anything with the real Josie. It’s not fair to either of them to keep coming back to this, to keep staying in the past when only one of them truly lived it. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Josie speaks up, pulling Hope out of her thoughts. “I’ve been back an entire week and....what? You just, didn’t think to mention it?” 

Hope can’t tell if the brunette’s angry, disappointed, or just plain tired. There are so many emotions flashing across her eyes—so, so many that Hope can’t catch a single one even if she tried. 

That’s only half the reason she fixes her gaze on the floor, instead. The other half is that she’s embarrassed. Humiliated. She doesn’t know how to answer Josie’s questions. She doesn’t know how to answer any of them. 

She can’t exactly _lie_. She has nothing to defend herself but the truth. 

Yet, at the same time, mere honesty doesn’t seem like enough. 

It might be a good place to start, though. 

“I was scared,” Hope admits. “I was nervous. If you didn’t remember, I didn’t want to confuse you.” 

Her eyes meet Josie’s with startling clarity. Words come easier, now. Everything has always been a little bit easier with Josie. “I didn’t want to ruin our friendship. I had no idea if you...” 

Josie’s voice is softer than Hope has ever heard it. She looks at Hope beneath her dark lashes, a little shyly. “I mean, you could have just asked me.” 

“If you wanted to know if I remembered,” she clarifies, and maybe the brown in her eyes is softer than Hope has ever seen it, too. “You could have just asked me.” 

Hope tilts her head, her previous words dying on the tip of her tongue. Isn’t that what she had done back in the kitchen? 

“I did ask you,” she says, matter-of-fact, but there’s a tinge of uncertainty there, too. Had she just imagined it? What if she’s still dreaming now? What if this is all just a figment of her imagination? 

“Only a couple of hours ago,” Josie tells her. “You should have told me before. You should...” 

Hope should have done a lot of things. She knows. Does Josie really think that she needs all of them to be thrown back into her face right now? 

She doesn’t know if she can handle it. Especially coming from Josie. 

Yet, isn’t this what she deserves? 

“You just should have told me before,” the siphoner finishes, and for some odd reason, it annoys Hope. 

The tribrid bristles slightly, nose flaring. She tries to keep her voice as unemotional as possible. It doesn’t work. 

“Well, it’s not like you remembered until now, anyways,” she says, but she sounds petty and curt even to her own ears. “What would have been the point?” 

Josie’s eyes widen minutely. The fist of her left hand loosens enough for Hope to see that she’s holding something slightly metallic. Maybe a bracelet? 

Josie suddenly moves for the door, head down to her chin. 

“You’re right,” she clips, tone strangely terse. Hope leans away, taken aback. “I don’t know what the point is, and I don’t even know whatI’m doing here.” 

Her fingers close around the door knob, and she turns back, if only for one, last disappointed look. “I’m sorry for waking you. I’ll see you later, Hope.” 

Wait. _What_? 

Before Hope can even realize it, she flashes across the small distance between her and Josie in seconds, her hand wrapping around the siphoner’s on the door knob. 

The tribrid finds that the warmth of Josie’s fingers beneath her own is not unlike the heat of a thousand flames. She doesn’t remove her fingers, though, even as they burn and singe her nerve endings to soot. 

“No, _I’m_ sorry,” Hope says, voice impossibly earnest, oddly breathless. “I’m sorry for not telling you. I’m sorry that I never made you feel powerful or strong. Because you _are_.” 

Hope pauses, unsure. Forgiveness is a very fickle thing. “I don’t see you as Lizzie’s sister, or her shadow. I see you as your own person. I see _you_ , Josie. I see you as the girl who saved my life when she was only thirteen. I see you as the selfless girl who puts everyone else above herself, I see you as the girl who took a bullet for her sister without hesitating.” 

“I see you,” she finishes, lips stretching into a broken smile like water. The two stare at each other, and the tribrid hopes that Josie can see the sincerity in her eyes—she hopes that the siphoner can hear how much she means this in her voice. “I swear, I do.” 

Hope can hear the second Josie’s breath catches. It puffs once across her face, and then does not come again. “ _Hope_.” 

Hope looks away, swallowing quickly, blinking quickly, because everything is quick, now. 

“I, um,” she stammers, not knowing exactly how to confess something like this. The feeling of Josie’s eyes on her does nothing to calm the tribrid’s racing, hungry heart. “I do more than see you.” 

A breath. A pause. The world crumbles to dust. The earth roars its fury. “I think I might...” 

_ I think I might love you?  _

Fuck. 

She can’t say that. That’s too much, too soon. 

But what better word could describe the way Josie consumes her thoughts, her entire being? What better word could describe the way every single part of her is all-too attuned to the other girl, the way her lungs rattle for air around her, the way her heart shatters and rebuilds itself over and over around her, the way she has never felt more relaxed, more on edge, than in Josie’s presence? 

Hope pulls her hand away from Josie’s, the tips of her ears burning. She flits her gaze up suddenly, out of nowhere, asking, “What do you remember?” 

Josie steps back into the door, presses herself against the wood in surprise. Hope can’t go on without knowing. 

“I...” Josie trails off, voice a whisper, or is she screaming, instead? Hope can’t tell the difference. The siphoner says, very slowly, “I was interested in you.” 

Hope’s heart gives a desperate jolt.

Josie hurries to correct herself. “ _She_ was, I mean.” 

Right. Dark-Josie. Not Josie-Josie. Never _Josie_. 

“She...” Josie bites her lip, looking down. “I don’t know if I can bring myself to say it out loud.” 

“It’s okay,” Hope tells her. “I can try, but I think...” 

Her voice becomes anxious, urgent. She whispers, as quiet as the wind outside, “I think I need you to look at me when I say this because I don’t know if I can otherwise.” 

Josie holds her gaze and nods for her to continue. 

“You—“ She laughs humorlessly, correcting herself, “ _not-you_ or whatever, startled me. I thought I was just imagining things, but then you kept...”

“...Pursuing...me.” Josie blushes, just a faint tinge of red at the very edges of her cheeks. Hope thinks she might be blushing, too. “And I was unnerved by it. I didn’t know how to handle it. The fact that you had never shown interest in me like that before was even more confusing, so I tried to stay away from you, but every time you—sorry, not-you—got closer, it became just that much harder to do so.” 

“Part of me stopped trying,” Hope admits, reluctantly. She watches Josie for her reaction, waiting for the other girl to yell at her and show Hope that she’s absolutely disgusted, but Josie doesn’t even blink. “Part of me _enjoyed_ it. Enjoyed being wanted by you. Even if it was never really _truly_ you.” 

“And then, when everything was done with,” she says, and oh god, is she rambling? Does this count as rambling? Maybe Hope should stop talking. Maybe Hope should. Maybe Hope can’t. “I thought that maybe my feelings would go away when...when _she_ went away, but they didn’t.” 

“Your feelings?” Josie asks quietly. Hope can’t quite make out the expression on her face. 

Where the world had been crumbling to dust earlier, now it is oddly still. The earth is oddly silent, too. 

“Yes.” The tribrid nods, testing the waters. She decides to foolishly throw herself all in. “I have feelings for you.”

Josie doesn’t say anything, so Hope rushes to fill the silence. She babbles, “But that doesn’t have to change anything. I won’t ever act on them, or like, um, more than I already have. Besides, I’m all about consent. Well, I _was_ , before—“

“Hope,” Josie cuts her off, a small smile on her lips that Hope doesn’t immediately see.

Hope feels her heart stop fully in her chest. She looks away, tears burning at the corners of her eyes, sensing the rejection coming from miles away. Her abdomen stirs empty, burning with nothing, nothing, nothing, and Hope thinks she might be sick. Yes. She’s absolutely sick to her fucking stomach. 

She turns her head to her shoulder, hoping that it’ll be enough to hide the way her bottom lip trembles. 

Then—

“I have feelings for you, too.” 

It takes the words about half a minute to register in Hope’s brain. She stands there, staring at Josie, pupils blown wide and lips parted open. Her bottom lip even stops trembling, fear replaced with shock. 

If her knees wobble, well, Hope doesn’t notice that just yet. 

“You do?” she asks, breathlessly, heart pounding in her ears in anticipation of the answer. Josie nods, lips curling into that bright smile Hope has seen time and time again, but can’t ever remember seeing directed at her. 

She grows very, very dizzy. Her head even begins to pound, left reeling from the reality of her feelings being returned. Her legs begin to tingle. Josie likes her? Like, _like-likes_ her? 

God. She had been prepared for Josie to let her down easy. She had been prepared for Josie to do the exact opposite, to yell at her and laugh at her. She had been _prepared_. But not for this. Never for this. 

“I...I think I have to sit down,” Hope mutters, just as her knees buckle underneath her. Josie helps her stumble towards her bed, a helping hand on her back as Hope tries to catch her breath. 

Chest heaving, she wraps her arms around her stomach and bends forward, just a little. Just enough so that it doesn’t feel like her lungs are struggling for air, just enough so that she can breathe. 

“Hope?” Josie implores, sitting next to her, so close that Hope’s skin scorches in the places where they brush. “Are you okay?” 

Damn it. Why is Josie asking if _she’s_ okay? 

How can Hope be so selfish as to freak out right now when Josie has spent weeks by herself, confined to the walls of her own mind? Yet the siphoner is still putting everyone else above herself? Putting Hope above herself? 

“Sorry,” the tribrid apologizes quickly, a bitter taste at the back of her tongue like acid. Her breath stutters in her throat when Josie places a steadying hand on her knee. The touch is purely innocent, perfectly _innocent_ , but Hope’s face heats up like it’s not. 

She swallows hard, wanting, no, needing to distract herself. She begins to rant once again. “It’s just kind of hard to believe. I mean, I spent the past few weeks convincing myself that you couldn’t ever like me back, and that I was betraying you by letting Dark-Josie—“

“Please don’t call her that,” Josie cuts in, not unkindly, a small smile on her face. 

Hope shoots her an apologetic glance, curling the corner of her lip up in a rueful smirk. 

Josie only pouts. “Have you all been calling me that while I was gone?” 

Hope shrugs. “It’s not like you ever corrected us.” 

“I was literally trapped inside my own head,” the siphoner deadpans, glaring at her with no real malice. Hope rolls her eyes playfully. 

“Wow.” She whistles and shakes her head. She jokes, “You’ve only been back a week and you’re already playing the possessed-by-dark-magic card. _Nice_.” 

A sharp snort sounds between them, surprising Hope enough that she raises her eyebrows at Josie, who is giggling like the tribrid just said the funniest thing in the world. 

Huh. 

Hope knows that it hadn’t been that funny. 

She continues to watch Josie as the girl laughs, cracking an endeared smile herself. Josie’s laugh is too contagious to hold out against, and Hope finds herself chuckling alongside her after less than ten seconds. 

When they grow quiet again, the soft sounds of Josie trying to catch her breath and clutching her stomach echoing between them, Hope chooses to speak up. 

“I’ve missed this. I’ve missed _you_ ,” she confesses, her hand reaching out for Josie’s own before she can completely stop herself. Their fingers messily intertwine on Josie’s thigh, and Hope wonders if Josie can feel the rapid pulse of her heart from where their wrists touch. 

If she strokes her thumb softly over the other girl’s middle finger, it is only to distract Josie away from noticing. 

“More than when I was in Malivore thinking you all forgot me,” Hope continues, ears ringing with the silent memories of Malivore. “More than when I got out and none of you remembered me. Having you here without you truly being here was...” 

“It just _sucked_.” For all her eloquence and time spent with a bunch of original, centuries-old vampires, it matters not in the face of Josie Saltzman. Sometimes, Hope can hardly even think next to her, let alone summon the English language. This time is no different. 

“I missed you so much that I started to give in to... _her_.” Dark-Josie. Not Josie, Hope has to remind herself. They are separate. “I started to think that it didn’t matter which way I had you, as long as I had you at all.”

Josie bites the inside of her cheek, lips pursing. Hope swallows the guilt rising in her throat like acid, swallows the sting at the tip of her tongue. 

“I...I was selfish,” she whispers, an ugly confession pulled between gritted teeth. If Hope’s jaw starts to throb, she ignores it. “I just wanted you close to me, and it didn’t help that you were so...” 

She pales, realizing what she had been so close to saying. 

“I’m?” Josie urges, cocking her head to the side curiously. Hope is wholly unable to look away, wholly unable to deprive her of an answer. 

“Attractive,” Hope blurts, flushing the second the word escapes her. She desperately longs to take it back. “You’re really, um, attractive?” 

Josie arches an eyebrow, but there’s a teasing glint in her eye that Hope can’t immediately get through her thick skull. 

The tribrid grimaces at how awful she sounds and backtracks, unintentionally creating a bigger mess for herself. “Sorry. God, you probably think I’m such a creep—I’m so, so sorry. I’m sorry if you can’t trust me anymore, I’m sorry if you look at me differently, now...” 

Josie’s heart jumps in the pulse of her wrist. Hope feels it. She can hear it, too. 

“The truth is,” Josie starts, voice a careful whisper. Something thick knots in Hope’s stomach, coils there tightly like fear. “Everything feels different, now.” 

“Lizzie and my dad keep tip-toeing around me, like they’re scared I’m broken or close to it or something,” she tells the tribrid, and Hope watches her with...

Well, it’s not exactly sympathy, not exactly pity, but there’s a sad anger there that makes Hope irrationally upset at Lizzie and Alaric, that makes her irrationally upset at herself. 

“My friends don’t recognize me,” Josie says, “I’m pretty sure some of them even hate me, but they feel too bad about it to tell me that. People I don’t even know have been coming up to me and pretending that _they_ do.” 

She pauses, licking her lips. Her eyes focus on something distant passed Hope’s right shoulder, seeing but unseeing, and when she blinks, the browns of her irises darken. 

“I can’t be what they want me to be,” she tells Hope, at last, almost forlornly. She leans forward, to whisper in a voice like smoke, “I can’t be what _anyone_ wants me to be.” 

“No,” Hope agrees with a small smile, Josie’s eyes snapping up to hers like she hadn’t expected Hope to say that. At all. “You can’t.” 

Disappointment, or at least something close to it, flickers across Josie’s face with all the speed of a shard of ice. They’re so close, close enough that the siphoner’s breath reaches Hope like a cool winter mist. For once, Hope does not _burn_ in its wake.

“Just like I can’t be anything but who I am,” she tells Josie, “and neither can anyone else.” 

Josie draws her eyebrows together, but doesn’t say anything. It spurs Hope on to continue. 

“You shouldn’t ever have to feel like you do, you should never feel like that.” She shakes her head, perhaps more angrily than she has the right to. “You deserve not to feel like that. You deserve...” 

Her throat grows thick with emotion. And, in a moment of weakness, of strength, when she still can’t quite look Josie in the eye, Hope says, “You deserve better.” 

The siphoner pulls on her hand with her own, but Hope is too numb and too sensitive all at once to feel it. She drops her head to her lap, feeling embarrassed, thinking that she’s said too much. 

(And not enough, another voice whispers.) 

“And do you?” Josie asks, suddenly. Hope glances up, almost gasping softly at the determined look in Josie’s eyes, reveling in how close they are now. Not three inches away, Hope’s sure. 

“Do I?” The tribrid frowns, screwing her face up in confusion, or maybe that’s just her being fucking stupid. 

By accident, her eyes fall down to Josie’s lips and linger dangerously. By accident. Hope silently observes as they part to form words. 

“Deserve better?” Josie murmurs softly, surprise causing Hope’s eyes to fly up from where they’ve strayed. They’re close enough now that Hope can feel the other girl’s chest just barely brushing against hers as they breathe. 

Poor Hope. Her mind blanks, her head spins, and she forgets how to speak the second Josie’s breath tickles her collarbone in the best way possible. They aren’t holding hands anymore, and a part of Hope mourns for the contact, and another part of her elates for what’s to come. 

She watches, enthralled, as Josie’s eyes flutter closed. Her dark lashes look longer from this view, fragile and pretty like the butterfly wings flapping nervously in Hope’s stomach, and—

Hope wonders, thrillingly, not for the first time, if they’re going to kiss now. If Josie’s going to let her lean forward and claim her lips with her own... 

And she _does_. 

Fuck. For all the times Hope had imagined this happening, it had never been quite like this. This good. This _amazing_. Like Hope doesn’t know what the hell to do with herself. 

She’s kissed plenty of people in her life, some chaste kisses, some drunken, some rough and angry, but she’s never met a person that kisses like Josie. 

Her mouth is soft and warm against Hope’s, and the rest of her body presses into the tribrid like she can’t take another second of them being apart. 

Hope is the same, her hands reaching out and finding Josie’s hips on instinct, and she only knows it once she feels the sharp edges of bone against her palms. 

Josie has always been this crazy sort of slim, and Hope has never realized it as much as in this moment, when the tips of her fingers can almost reach each other on the small of Josie’s waist. 

Her hands dig in so tightly that she fears she might leave bruises on the other girl’s skin, but the wolf in her finds the thought almost exhilarating, so her hold on Josie’s sides only tightens. 

Josie doesn’t seem to mind, if the way she arches into Hope’s touch and whimpers sweetly against her lips is anything to go by. 

Hope instantly sees gold erupt across the blacks of her closed eyelids at the sound, and she clenches them even harder to make sure Josie won’t see and get scared off. 

It works, because Josie keeps kissing her, their lips sliding and moving against each other perfectly. Hope never wants to stop. 

She doesn’t quite know when Josie gains the upper hand, but the siphoner hovers over her now, her right hand on Hope’s thigh but her left still clenched tight. 

She slowly moves her hand up the tribrid’s leg, setting trails of fire in its path. She skims the hem of Hope’s shirt for a long moment, before her fingers slip underneath the fabric—just to swipe the blunt of her nails experimentally across the skin of Hope’s stomach. 

It makes something hot and thick burn in the lowest part of Hope’s abdomen, and she groans into Josie’s mouth when the other girl decides that she likes it and tries it again. 

Her eyes snap open, liquid-gold scorching her irises like molten lava, and Hope doesn’t quite think before clamping down hard on Josie’s bottom lip with her sharp canines. 

It doesn’t seem like Josie had been expecting it either, because she gives a small yelp and drops whatever she had been holding in her left hand since storming into Hope’s room. The object drops into the tribrid’s lap with a dull thud. 

When they pull away, Hope sits up underneath Josie as the siphoner rubs at her bruised, slightly-bloodied lips.

“Ow.” 

Hope softly strokes the girl’s hip in apology, almost leaning forward to connect their lips again before stopping herself. 

She lets her eyes fall on the object in her lap:

The talisman she had given Josie for her sixteenth birthday. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading and for all the kudos and comments :) 
> 
> i guess i’ll update my hogwarts au :(( next :(((

**Author's Note:**

> writer’s block during a quarantine is a bitch :( here’s the result hehe


End file.
